Showtimes & Tickets Enter Zip Code:

FELON
Written & Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
Produced by Dan Keston, Nick Phillips & Tucker Tooley
Released by Stage 6 Films
USA.  104 min.  Rated R
With Stephen Dorff, Val Kilmer, Harold Perrineau, Sam Shepard, Marisol Nichols, Anne Archer, Nate Parker & Greg Serano

In the middle of the night, Wade Porter (Stephen Dorff), a regular married family man with a fiancée and a young son, accidentally kills a burglar with a bat looting his home. But the police determine that it wasn’t in self-defense, and Porter is sent to prison as a felon. He’s also blamed for a stabbing on the bus en route to prison and put in the maximum security section, where the only time spent outside is used for a brutal game where the prisoners are let loose to fight viciously and the officers—led by Harold Perrineau’s Lieutenant Jackson—look down from above armed with tennis ball-firing guns to use at will.

Porter tries to navigate between fitting into the harsh day-to-day routine of prison life and in helping keep his fiancée, Laura (Marisol Nichols), financially afloat. Enter notorious John Smith (Val Kilmer), a lifer covered in tattoos (with one arm dedicated to his most beloved memories) who’s transferred to Porter’s cell.  He killed apparently out of protection of his family too. The bond between the men is shaky at first, but they soon gain each other’s trust in battling the tough, tyrannical Lt. Jackson.

All of these characters are drawn out fairly well, if somewhat predictably, but the “break time” for the prisoners is a rough, exacting kind of male torture where they’re allowed to fight to near death. The brutal fight scenes are filmed with a fast moving hand-held camera that compliments (or rather, is in line with) the grim, visceral nature of the narrative.

But if the plot isn’t entirely original, the performances suffice more than expected. Dorff gives what might be his most mature and well-rounded performance after years of substandard work in genre pictures (FeardotCom). He’s alive in so many scenes and sympathetic, but not too easily so as he has to make an uneasy, brief alliance with skinheads. He balances out the character’s complex dilemma wonderfully.  Sporting a huge goatee, Kilmer, too, is also very good here.

Most impressive and intense of all, though, is Perrineau, who does a 180 from his turn as wheelchair-bound prisoner on HBO’s Oz as the film’s subtle menace. (One scene involving Jackson’s son is one of the best pieces of acting I’ve seen this year). Felon’s basically a hard-hitting (pun intended) drama that isn’t too far out there in creating something new, but within the story’s limitations, it’s a compelling work. Jack Gattanella
July 18, 2008